The Long Goodbye
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Movie Reviews of The Long Goodbye
Movie Review: Inspired Orchestration of Talent
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Altman at top form here delivers a revolutionary and breakthrough film that is still under-appreciated, perhaps because it is too easily tagged as updated film noir. Say what you want about the Marlowe character and the Chandler novels -- it was all top flight pulp fiction, that's all, no matter how it fascinated the French and who started calling it noir.
The plot has been done 100,000 times -- cheap detective and unsolved crime, beautiful woman as alluring foil, and a host of red herrings, weirdos, suspects, crazies, all keeping you on edge until last cut. And sure, Bogart nailed this particular character memorably in the author's own time, in a manner which could only have been done then. But neither the text nor character are sancrosanct. They were good available fodder to launch something more.
That something more is an extraordinary actuality, a gritty realism that captures BOTH southern California and the 1970s -- a time and a place -- as nothing else on record. Watching the movie is uncanny, like entering a dream or a time warp. It reminds you of the possibilities of cinema that still, with the art form not yet a century old, remain to be explored. The wayward Gould is perfect, and he is perfectly used. The great and under-rated Sterling Hayden delivers a vastly haunting performance, as a man from a whole other American time and place -- just as real as the one on camera but already gone -- leaving him a quite menacing fish out of water. The music -- a lovely but endlessly repeated strain, finally becomes as stultifyingly hypnotizing as a mantra from the far east. That plus a surrealistic camera drench you in the great big NOW -- yet combine to give the movie the patina of timelessness. All the characters are caught in this gauzy vision as if in amber, specimens ever freshly packaged and delivered to us in all the weirdness and eccentricity of their time and place. And finally, the master's touch -- using two non-actors for the key noir roles -- "disgraced" (just disgracefully honest, really) baseball pitcher turned author Jim Bouten as the baddie, and the mistress of then headlines maker Clifford Irving (forger of the notorious fake Howard Hughes autobiography) as the femme fatale. It is as if Altman lifts these two, in the cucoons of their media noteriety of the day, and finds matching fictive wrappings to transport their enigmas fully intact to us and the unknown future. That effect is incredible enough, but the undertow is how it ups the ante for what the seemingly hapless Gould character must do -- in his own way ripped out of time and place and thrown helpless into a strange and terrifying world. You certainly wouldn't figure he would prevail.
Altman's unique gift is to orchestrate the talent, set all the balls in motion, then get out of the way, let others run downfield with his inspirations. Far from being the sort of controlling director as Kubrick or Orson Welles, or for that matter Kurosawa or Bergman, Altman is true successor to the mantle of Nicholas Ray, maker of Rebel Without a Cause. His enterprise exudes a democratic American confidence, but not shouting at you, either. This film ranks as twin peak to his Nashville, his other best work. All that, and the film is also funny as hell. And finally more grimly serious than any classic noir, as all moves to convulsive and unexpected conclusion. The difference from ordinary noir is that this take on the genre is not stylized. It takes the plum out of the pulp fiction, so to speak, treats that little germ of truth in Raymond Chandler's noir world as seriously as any big truth in serious literature, something to be fully explored, developed, reckoned with. When Marlowe walks away at the end he's no longer Marlowe, he's somebody you never met and hope you never do, a terrifying moment of revelation.
Movie Review: A fine movie...and it's possible to enjoy Altman's Philip Marlowe as much as Chandler's Philip Marlowe
Summary: 4 Stars
Terry Lennox has a problem. He's in trouble and needs help getting out of the country. Who else can he go to than one of his best friends, Philip Marlowe? All he asks is that Marlowe drive him down to Tijuana...right now. Marlowe, a private eye who probably has few good friends other than Lennox, does it. When Marlowe gets back hours later, he's picked up by the cops, knocked around, jailed and finally released. It seems Terry's wife has been beaten to death and the police want to know where Terry is. Marlowe doesn't believe that his friend is a killer and decides he'll look into the case. He also is hired by the sexy Eileen Wade to find her missing husband, the aging alcoholic writer Roger Wade. Funny, Marlowe finally decides, that the Wades live very close to the Lennox house in an exclusive, gated Malibu enclave (with a private cop at the gate who does a good imitation of Barbara Stanwyck). Then Marlowe is forced into a private conversation with the gangster Marty Augustine...something about a missing $50,000 of Augustine's that Lennox supposedly had and that Augustine wants back. Marlowe is taught how vicious Augustine can be in one violent act so startling it'll make your stress level rise every time Augustine shows up. Marlowe finally puts all the pieces together, slowly and persistently, until he finds himself in Mexico for probably the last time.
Is this really Philip Marlowe we're watching? Well, it's Robert Altman's Philip Marlowe, which means Raymond Chandler probably wouldn't recognize him. Is this a bad thing? Not at all. Altman (and Elliot Gould as Marlowe) has put his own imprint on the iconic gumshoe. Marlowe is often just confused by things. He's laid back, quizzical, good-natured in a reasonably skeptical way, not quite a loser, maybe not too smart the first time around but he learns and he is not going to stop looking for answers. The mystery has a vague resemblance to the bones of Chandler's book, but Altman isn't as much concerned with the trajectory of Mrs. Lennoxes murder as he is with the interplay of Marlowe and those he meets, and in how the story evolves from that interplay.
Altman put together a vivid cast. Gould would probably be glaringly miscast as a Marlowe played tough and straight. As Altman's Marlowe, however, he's the glue that holds the movie together and provides that strange Altman mixture of almost sly humor and drama. The byplay between Marlowe and his hungry cat and between Marlowe and the three luscious yoga practitioners in the next apartment lets us settle into this new-model Marlowe. Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade gives a roaring, dynamic, foul-mouthed performance. The scenes he shares with the small, precise and sleazy Dr. Verringer played by Henry Gibson are almost surreal in the disparity between the two actors' physical sizes and acting styles. Gibson, with a terrible comb-over, holds his own. When he slaps Hayden full in the face, it's almost as startling as what Augustine does with a glass Coke bottle. Nina Van Pallandt does a fine job as the complex and compelling Eileen Wade. We're no more sure of her game than Marlowe is, but he's got enough sense not to fall for her. Jim Boulton as Terry Lennox doesn't have a lot of screen time, but you'll remember him.
The end of the movie, when Marlowe puts the pieces together and provides his own sad justice, left me thinking...but about what, I'm not sure. About the nature of friendship, I guess...how friendship doesn't necessarily work both ways, even when you think it does. Altman has given us a first-rate movie that goes well beyond a private eye caper. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is a fine creation. So is Robert Altman's. This is a film worth watching several times.
The movie has a slightly washed out look which was created purposefully by Altman and his cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond. There are several extras which I didn't sample, including a discussion with Altman and Gould.
Movie Review: Don't bother with this film
Summary: 1 Stars
The only real crime surrounding this film was the murder of Chandler's story. This is just another example of someone capitalizing on someone else's reputation to sell a film. Gould is about as much Marlowe as Pee Wee Herman is Mike Hammer - i.e., there is no resemblence.
Additionally, the cinematography is terrible - it looks like a cheap 70's movie shot in video instead of film. There's absolutely no suspense, nor snappy delivery of lines by Gould. I can only imagine that anyone who liked this movie probably cared more about Marlowe's bare-topped neighbors than anything else, because there's almost nothing of redeeming value in this movie.
For those fans of real noir and/or hard-boiled detective pulp, don't waste your money or time watching this junk. You'll be disappointed.
Movie Review: Fearlessly reinterprets and reinvents to make his own classic
Summary: 5 Stars
This is both imagination and irreverence having their finest hours. Robert Altman, who is never afraid to experiment, reinvented the character of Philip Marlowe to make him relevant to modern times--"modern times" here being the early 1970s. If Marlowe or film noir or detective yarns are sacred cows to you, you'll be put off by the changes introduced in this update--you may even find them sacriligious. I'm not beholden to the traditions, or even all that familiar with "traditional" Philip Marlowe I have to admit, so that must be why I was blown away by this film. Everything about it feels so fresh and audacious for its time.
Riffing on and refining the "fish out of water" motiff, Altman transplants Marlowe of the 50s into the early 70s, and we watch with amusement as he struggles with pop psychology, the sexual revolution, yoga, a "smoke-free" environment, and other trappings of modern times. But Marlowe still has his old code of ethics, and, like Jakes Gittes in Chinatown, another updated noir classic, he despises liars. Unfortunately, in his business he's surrounded by them, which makes life difficult.
But in the sly Leigh Brackett script, it's not just humans who are cynical and self-centered. Marlowe has a cat who can tell if he's not getting his preferred brand of cat food, and who doesn't stick around if he's not. That Marlowe is loyal to the cat, but the cat doesn't give a whit about Marlowe is just the first strand of interesting character development, and it's a clever technique. In most other movies this "prelude" to the real story would just seem like padding, but here it's essential. (The script, by the way, is one great line after another, with very natural, effortless dialogue. Bracklett penned the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back for George Lucas, which may explain why Empire is the wittiest and smartest of all the Star Wars movies.)
Despite his being a man far out of step with the times, our sympathies are carefully set up to reside with Marlowe. Altman emphasises the "unrealness" of the modern world by housing Marlowe in a strange apartment complex that seems, like Marlowe, cut off from the rest of the world, but in a modern way, a way he is not. Throughout the film I got the impression the modern day people are as isolated in their own way as he is. The difference is they don't seem to sense it.
And Elliott Gould is perfectly cast for this sort of thing. He always plays characters who seem a little bit "out of it," and this is one of his best. He also has an improvisational quality to his delivery that meshes perfectly with what Altman is trying to achieve. The other characters are not as memorable, and frankly I was not as impressed by Sterling Hayden's Hemingwayesque character as some other people were. Nina van Whatshername was a standard issue b(l)each blonde, but perhaps that's just what was needed here.
The main interest outside of Gould and the setting is the handling of music, and sound in general. Rather than ask for a full score, Altman had John Williams and Johnny Mercer write a simple, slightly wistful song which is then worked into the picture every way imaginable. It's in the soundtrack, but also in source music, everywhere from supermarket Muzak to Mexican funeral music to the chimes on a doorbell. The concept sounds gimmicky, but somehow Altman makes it work, and it adds to the "unrealness" of the surroundings that our hero lives in, an unrealness no one else seems to notice. Here Altman has found a bizarre quality in the contemporary everyday that in MASH he had to go all the way to Korea/Vietnam to discover.
The transfer to DVD appears to be a good one. I say "appears" to be because much has been made over the "flashing" technique that Altman and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond use to soften the film's contrasts and give it a more naturalistic effect. It's hard to say if the result on DVD is exactly what was intended, but I think it looks good, though the difference between the gritty and realistic approach to cinematography then and today are apparent. For one thing, aside from the flashing, I don't think any movie lights were used, and if they were, they certainly weren't used heavily. Many scenes, such as those at the beach house (Altman's real-life beach house, by the way), look like they were shot just by popping the camera into the surroundings. Characters are in shadow, and there's little of the key/spot/fill lighting we're so used to in modern films. I love this harsh realism--it's what real life looks like, and it complements the rest of the film beautifully--but they'd never do it this way today, as Zsigmond alludes to on a supplementary featurette.
And that brings me to the supplements. They aren't huge in number but they are rather generous given this is a cult film. There's a discussion by Altman himself. He often can be boring or redundant, but here he says a lot of interesting things. There's also the featurette featuring Zsigmond, which is even more fascinating as he discusses his methods. Then there's a reproduction of an article that appeared in American Cinematographer about how the film's "flash" techniques were achieved. This reproduction is very well done and is easy to read on the TV screen. Finally there's the film's trailer, which is very entertaining itself.
As I said, I'm not beholden to classic Marlowe, and I love directors who experiment, so this worked for me. This is Altman during a wonderful streak of triumphs, before the late 70s and early 80s pushed him almost to irrelevance. As I frequently find myself saying with my favorite films, they just don't make 'em like this anymore.
Movie Review: Altmans Chandler, softboiled.Transfer good.
Summary: 3 Stars
If you liked bogart and powell and mitchum as marlowe, I doubt you are going to like Elliot Gould here as the celebrated private eye of the Chandler novels.For one thing , he smokes throughout this picture but he doesn`t inhale!.If you are familiar with the novels and the character,you know this is Altmans Marlowe, not Chandlers.( As a side note, Mr Gould does an excellent reading of Farewell My Lovely in audio book form,not part of this package;so you can`t blame HIM for this performance) In an interview as part of the very good extra on this disc, Gould remarks that this picture is considered "a cult classic," and the great writer and critic pauline kael gave it high praise over thirty years ago when it came out.Most of the reviews on this board are positive as well.But if you buy this movie(I would suggest a rental first) you`re going to get something quite different from bogart and mitchum and hawks and richards.You are going to either like it , or dismiss it (as kael pointed out , compare it to houstons "beat the devil"( an inside lark,roundly loved and hated)The cinematography is outstanding and the transfer captures it well. Note;if you have ever seen a picture called Double Indemnity,co-written by Chandler, Fred Mac Murray plays what was in effect Phillip Marlowe, as insurance salesman. Fred COULD have been the best Marlowe of all!